Textify v1.10 comes with small but powerful enhancements that were requested by several users. The main enhancements are around the text popup, which can now be resized and edited. After resizing or editing the content, the text popup becomes pinned, and stays on the screen until it’s closed.
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Textify is a tool which allows to copy text from dialogs and controls which don’t allow it otherwise. The core functionality of Textify is implemented with user interface accessibility which is provided by Windows. Until version 1.9, Textify was using Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) which is available since Windows 95. With Windows 7, Microsoft introduced Microsoft UI Automation as a successor to MSAA. Since both frameworks worked equally well when Textify was created, I made Textify use MSAA which allowed it to support older systems as well.
But now it seems that some of the new technologies in Windows no longer support the old MSAA framework. This can be quite noticeable in Windows 11, where prominent elements such as the taskbar don’t support MSAA. To adapt to the new lack of support for MSAA, Textify now uses Microsoft UI Automation by default. Note that while the results are mostly the same, there can be subtle differences, and so it’s possible to get back to using MSAA by changing the settings in Textify.
Below are a couple of examples which compare the old MSAA which was used before v1.9 to the new Microsoft UI Automation.
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About two years ago I introduced the so-called “web buttons” in Textify in the Textify v1.6 meets the web post. In the original implementation, you could configure a button to open a link in one of the following two ways: in a popup window which hosts an IE control, or in the default browser. Using the feature for a while, I discovered that each option has its own drawbacks.
The IE control popup was often slow to load, especially for the Google Translate website. Also, several websites (again, Google Translate is an example) showed an offer to upgrade to a better browser right in the popup. Finally, you had to login to websites separately, since IE is probably not the browser you use daily.
Using the default browser solves the issues above, but the website opens in a new tab for most browsers. That’s too distracting, at least for me, especially when I’m already using the browser and need a quick translation or search.
Textify v1.8 improves the situation by opening the website in a new popup window while using the default browser. Currently, Chrome and Firefox are supported. Chrome provides an option to create a new minimalistic window without the URL bar by using the --app command line switch. Firefox doesn’t provide such an option, but it provides the -width, -height, -new-window command line options which allow to create a small popup window, albeit with the URL bar and the rest of the UI.
In addition to that, it’s now simpler to configure a button to launch a custom command, be it a URL or a program on your computer. Use the “More settings” button in Textify for details.
Textify is a tool which allows to select and copy text from many places in Windows where it’s not possible otherwise. This includes error messages, dialogs, lists, and even elements of the taskbar. Since its release in March, Textify hasn’t seen much new functionality, but there’s one feature which I had in mind for a while: integrating web services with Textify. Textify could then be used for quick actions such as translating text, searching the web, looking up a word in a dictionary, and many more, which can be quite handy.
Finally, I’m happy to announce that I’ve dedicated some time to implement this functionality in Textify v1.6. Here’s a short demonstration gif:
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Have you ever wanted to copy some text from a dialog box which doesn’t provide such functionality?
Textify was created to solve this problem: you can point your mouse over the text, click on the mouse shortcut (Shift + Middle click by default), and get a selectable view of the text.
textify_setup.exe (593.16 kB, changelog)
Latest version: v1.10.4
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